OMGJeremy

Young Jeremy P and the Big Velvet Ant

While I’m inexplicably afraid of spiders, Amanda has asked us not to write about spiders since apparently everyone is horrified of spiders.    It would be the equivalent of writing “Why I Enjoy Eating.”  Instead I had to think back to the last time I was really actually afraid of a bug.  I had almost decided “screw Amanda… I’m writing about spiders,” but then a memory came back from my youth.   My dad was in the military, so we moved around a lot, and for about 5 years while I was in elementary school, we lived in Gloucester, Virginia.  If you’ve never been to the Southern half of Virginia, it’s pretty much the town from King of the Hill but with slightly different accents.  Actually, everyone sounds like Boomhauer.

Gloucester has absolutely no hills as I recall, it’s just flat land surrounded by marshes.  It is flat, hot, and miserable in the summer.  As a result, every other house had an above-ground swimming pool, and we were one of the people with a pool.  Every summer, we’d spend almost all day outside in and around the pool, digging holes in the yard, or some other “outside” activity that our parents would force us to do.  This led to a lot of time just staring at the ground and looking at bugs, and we always had a shitload of ants– thankfully not fire ants.  That is an ant I thankfully don’t have a lot of experience with.  However, occasionally I’d see a large furry striped ant… maybe about as big as a quarter (which is massive for an ant).  Being rather stupid, I would get really close to them and annoy them, but I never picked one up because as a general rule Jeremy P. does not pick up furry bugs.  It is a rule that has never steered me wrong.

This wonderful creature I would later find out is the Velvet Ant.   This name is amazingly inaccurate because not only are they not velvet at all, but they are also not ants.  These are actually wasps, you know the sort of bug that can sting you again and again and are generally just assholes.  The female of the species does not actually fly, so instead it quickly scutters along the ground looking like a soft furry ant, which is a total dick move by nature.  It is also called the Cow-Killer Ant, because it is rumored that its sting can stun an adult cow.  While I can find no proof online that this has ever actually occurred, I am going to believe it, because I know it can take an 8 year old boy out of commission for a while.

Cutie cuddlebug!

One summer, I was running around the yard barefoot because when you own an outdoor pool you apparently stop wearing shirts and shoes.  While I knew there were plenty of bugs crawling around in the yard, I didn’t put together the concept of foot protection to avoid getting bitten or in general not stepping in dog poop.  In general, if I was outside during the summer I would be close to naked all the time, which is actually a statement I can make now, and it helps explain why I’m not allowed to mow the lawn by state law.

My friends and I were out playing “throw random pieces of trash at each other” — a game we had invented that would end up putting me in the hospital eventually for stitches.  While running around to dive out of the way of a well-thrown rock, my foot exploded in pain and I fell to the ground, causing my friends to laugh at me until I eventually got up and quickly limped into my house while crying.  This was a pretty common scene for my friends to be honest, but normally it was just because I can be the sorest of losers.  However, what caused me to run was that before I got up, I looked around for what I could have stepped on, thinking it was a nail.  But all I could find was a slightly smashed “furry ant,” which wasn’t doing anything but making a loud, raspy buzzing noise and was limping in my direction.

I don’t know when the last time you were stung by a wasp was, but I recently did battle with a swarm that had decided the bushes by my front door was the best place to build a nest and reiterated how much it sucks.  At first it’s a sharp pain like any other bite, and then quickly the pain builds up and causes you to replace whatever action you are currently doing with “scream out loud and then run inside.”  Eventually the really bad pain goes away, but it is replaced by a dull throbbing pain that you will have for days or longer.  As a grown man, I was able to take a couple stings before I decided I would just hide inside and use the side door until I could call an exterminator, and these were just regular everyday wasps.  The sting I got when I was 8 was far worse, and it was on the ball of my foot– you know, that piece you can’t avoid stepping on.

POW! Right in the solar plexus!

As a result, I didn’t just spend the day inside, I spent the next week barely walking around the house and not going outside, just playing Nintendo. While I currently think of that as “an awesome week,” the younger me did not think so at all. When I finally could walk around without worrying about constant throbbing pain, I wore shoes all the time.  All I needed to remember was that my yard was full of furry ants that could bite / sting me, and that when molested would start making a horrible buzzing noise.  Thankfully I moved from there to central Maryland a couple years later and haven’t seen them since… and apparently blacked them out of my memory until I was asked to write this article.

Thanks again, Amanda.